On March 31st, forty-two New Haven teenagers flocked to Yale for the first ever Genetics Day, hosted by the undergraduate Genetics Club. The students learned about a wide variety of topics, including the role genetics plays in personalized healthcare, the molecular structure of DNA and mechanisms by which genes are inherited, the role model organisms play in research and the ethics of genome engineering.
The event wouldn’t have existed without two Yale undergraduates, Ava Daniel and Aakshi Agarwal. Daniel is the founder and co-president of the Genetics Club, and Agarwal is the journal club coordinator and co-president. In past summers, Daniel interned at the personal genomics company 23andMe as a genetics education specialist, where she worked to develop written educational materials about genetics for people without a biology background. Her role at 23andMe inspired her to start a club dedicated to educating Yale and New Haven community members about genetics. “Talking to so many people about the importance of genetics got me really excited about having something like that on campus,” says Daniel, “I know that people at Yale would want to talk about this and be a part of a genetics education group.”
Agarwal first had the idea to run a genetics event on for New Haven students on Yale’s campus. “Why not do an event at Yale for kids to come here?” says Agarwal. “Some of the kids live ten minutes from here, but they feel like they don’t have a place on campus and they feel like they don’t deserve to be here despite being New Haven residents. That’s a really big part, bringing them to campus and showing them that you are really smart and you do have really good ideas.”
Throughout the day, students experienced a variety of workshops and demos led by Yale undergraduates, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and even faculty members. Students participated in short lecture rotations and discussions on CRISPR gene editing, genetic model organisms, DNA forensics, and how 23andMe works. At the end of the day, students played an intense game of Genetics Kahoot, demonstrating their newly-accrued knowledge from the day.
“The message we wanted them to walk away with was that genetics is for everyone,” says Agarwal. “They are the generation that’s going to decide in what’s going on in human genome editing policies. Our goal was to show them that they have a future in genetics if they want it.”